Connect Components with Events

Learning Objectives

Create action handlers to catch and handle events that other components send.

Refactor a big component into smaller components.

Connect Components with Events

In this unit we’re going to tackle the last piece of unfinished functionality in our little
expenses app: the Reimbursed? checkbox. You’re probably thinking that implementing a checkbox
would be a short topic. We could certainly take some shortcuts, and make it a very
short topic.

But this unit, in addition to making the checkbox work, is about removing all of the
shortcuts we’ve already taken. We’re going to spend this unit “Doing It Right.” Which,
in a few places, means refactoring work we did earlier.

Before we start on that, let’s first talk about the shortcuts we took, the Right Way, and why
the Right Way is (a little bit) harder, but also better.

Composition and Decomposition

If you take a look at our little expenses app in source code form, and list the separate code artifacts, you’ll come up with something like the following.

expenses component

expenses.cmp

expensesController.js

expensesHelper.js

expensesList component

expensesList.cmp

expenseItem component

expenseItem.cmp

ExpensesController (server-side)

ExpensesController.apex

Here’s how everything comes together, with the createExpense and updateExpense events you’re
wiring up later.

But, if you look at the app on screen, what do you see? What you should see, and what you’ll eventually see everywhere you look, is that the app breaks down into many more components. You’ll see that you can decompose our app further, into smaller pieces, than we’ve done so far. At the very least, we hope you see that the Add Expense form really should be its own, separate component. (That’s why we drew a box around it in the user interface!)

Why didn’t we make that form a separate component? Not doing that is by far the biggest shortcut we took over the course of this module. It’s worse than the hack we called “disgusting,” in terms of software design. The right way to build a Lightning Components app is to create independent components, and then compose them together to build new, higher level features. Why didn’t we take that approach?

We took the shortcut, we kept the Add Expense form inside the main expenses component, because it kept the main expenses array component attribute and the controller code that affected it in the same component. We wanted the createExpense() helper function to be able to touch the expenses array directly. If we’d moved the Add Expense form into a separate component, that wouldn’t have been possible.

Why not? We covered the reason briefly very early on, but we want to really hammer on it now. Lightning components are supposed to be self-contained. They are stand-alone elements that encapsulate all of their essential functionality. A component is not allowed to reach into another component, even a child component, and alter its internals.

There are two principal ways to interact with or affect another component. The first way is one we’ve seen and done quite a bit of already: setting attributes on the component’s tag. A component’s public attributes constitute one part of its API.

The second way to interact with a component is through events. Like attributes, components declare the events they send out, and the events they can handle. Like attributes, these public events constitute a part of the component’s public API. We’ve actually used and handled events already, but the events have been hiding behind some convenience features. In this unit, we’ll drag events out into the light, and create a few of our own.

The Wiring-a-Circuit Metaphor, Yet Again

These two mechanisms—attributes and events—are the API “sockets,” the
ways you connect components together to form complete circuits. Events are also, behind the
scenes, the electrons flowing through that circuit. But that’s only one way that events
are different from attributes.

When you set the onclick attribute on a <lightning:button> to an action handler in a
component’s controller, you create a direct relationship between those two components.
They are linked, and while they’re using public APIs to remain independent of each
other, they’re still coupled.

Events are different. Components don’t send events to another component. That’s not how events work. Components broadcast events of a particular type. If there’s a component that responds to that type of event, and if that component “hears” your event, then it will act on it.

You can think of the difference between attributes and events as the difference between wired circuits and wireless circuits. And we’re not talking wireless phones here. One component doesn’t get the “number” for another component and call it up. That would be an attribute. No, events are like wireless broadcasts. Your component gets on the radio, and sends out a message. Is there anyone out there with their radio set turned on, and tuned to the right frequency? Your component has no way of knowing—so you should write your components in such a way that it’s OK if no one hears the events they broadcast. (That is, things might not work, but nothing should crash.)

Sending an Event from a Component

OK, enough theory, let’s do something specific with our app, and see how events work in code. We will start by implementing the Reimbursed? checkbox. Then we’ll take what we learned doing that, and use it to refactor the Add Expense form into its own component, the way the Great Engineer intended.

First, let’s focus on the click handler on the <lightning:input> for the Reimbursed__c field.

Before we dive into the click handler, let’s take a step back to catch a glimpse on what <lightning:input> has to offer. type="toggle" is really a checkbox with a toggle switch
design. class enables you to apply custom CSS
styling or use SLDS utilities. messageToggleActive
and messageToggleInactive provides a custom label
for the checked and unchecked positions. These handy attributes are only several of many
others on <lightning:input>. Finally, the
onchange attribute of <lightning:input> gives us an easy way to wire
the toggle switch to an action handler that updates the record when you slide right
(checked) or slide left (unchecked).

Now, let’s think about what should happen when it’s checked or unchecked. Based on the code we
wrote to create a new expense, updating an expense is probably something like this.

Get the expense item that changed.

Create a server action to update the underlying expense record.

Package expense into the action.

Set up a callback to handle the response.

Fire the action, sending the request to the server.

When the response comes and the callback runs, update the expenses attribute.

Um, what expenses attribute? Look at our component
markup again. No expenses, just a singular
expense. Hmmm, right, this component is
just for a single item. There’s an expenses
attribute on the expensesList component…but
that’s not even the “real” expenses. The real
one is a component attribute in the top-level expenses component. Hmmm.

Is there a component.get("v.parent")?
Or would it have to be component.get("v.parent").get("v.parent")—something that would let us get a reference to our parent’s parent, so we can set expenses there?

Stop. Right. There.

Components do not reach into other components and set values on them. There’s no way to say “Hey grandparent, I’m gonna update expenses.” Components keep their hands to themselves. When a component wants an ancestor component to make a change to something, it asks. Nicely. By sending an event.

Here’s the cool part. Sending an event looks almost the same as handling the update directly. Here’s the code for the clickReimbursed handler.

Whoa. That’s pretty simple! And it does look kind of like what we envisioned above. The preceding code for clickReimbursed does the following:

Gets the expense that changed.

Creates an event named updateExpense.

Packages expense into the event.

Fires the event.

The callback stuff is missing, but otherwise this is familiar. But…what’s going to handle calling the server, and the server response, and update the main expenses array attribute? And how do we know about this updateExpense event, anyway?

updateExpense is a custom event, that is, an event we write ourselves. You can tell because, unlike getting a server action, we use component.getEvent() instead of component.get(). Also, what we are getting doesn’t have a value provider, just a name. We’ll define this event in just a moment.

As for what’s going to handle calling the server and handling the response, let’s talk about it. We could implement the server request and handle the response right here in the expenseItem component. Then we’d send an event to just rerender things that depend on the expenses array. That would be a perfectly valid design choice, and would keep the expenseItem component totally self-contained, which is desirable.

However, as we’ll see, the code for creating a new expense and the code for updating an existing expense are very similar, enough so that we’d prefer to avoid duplicate code. So, the design choice we’ve made is to send an updateExpense event, which the main expenses component will handle. Later, when we refactor our form, we’ll do the same for creating a new expense.

By having all child components delegate responsibility for handling server requests and for managing the expenses array attribute, we’re breaking encapsulation a bit. But, if you think of these child components as the internal implementation details of the expenses component, that’s OK. The main expenses component is self-contained.

You have a choice: consolidation of critical logic, or encapsulation. You’ll make trade-offs in Lightning Components just like you make trade-offs in any software design. Just make sure you document the details.

Defining an Event

The first thing we’ll do is define our custom event. In the Developer Console, select File | New | Lightning Event, and name the event “expensesItemUpdate”. Replace the default
contents with the following markup.

There are two types of events, component and application. Here we’re using a component event, because we want an ancestor component to catch and handle the event. An ancestor is a component “above” this one in the component hierarchy. If we wanted a “general broadcast” kind of event, where any component could receive it, we’d use an application event instead.

The full differences and correct usage of application vs. component events isn’t something we’re able to get into here. It’s a more advanced topic, and there are enough complicated details that it’s a distraction from our purpose in this module. When you’re ready for more, the Resources will help you out.

The other thing to notice about the event is how compact the definition is. We named the event when it was created, expensesItemUpdate, and its markup is a beginning and ending <aura:event> tag, and one <aura:attribute> tag. An event’s attributes describe the payload it can carry. In the clickReimbursed action handler, we set the payload with a call to setParams(). Here in the event definition, we see how the event parameter is defined, and that there are no other valid parameters.

And that’s pretty much all there is to defining events. You don’t add implementation or behavior details to events themselves. They’re just packages. In fact, some events don’t have any parameters at all. They’re just messages. “This happened!” All of the behavior about what to do if “this” happens is defined in the components that send and receive the event.

Sending an Event

We already looked at how to actually fire an event, in the clickReimbursed action handler. But for that to work, we need to do one last thing, and that’s register the event. Add this line of markup to the expenseItem component, right below its attribute definitions.

This markup says that our component fires an event, named “updateExpense”, of type “c:expensesItemUpdate”. But, wasn’t “expensesItemUpdate” the name of the event when we defined it? And what happened to component or application event types?

You’re right to think it’s a little confusing—it really is a bit of a switch-a-roo. It might help to think of “application” and “component” as Lightning Components framework event types, while the types that come from the names of events you define are custom event types, or event structure types. That is, when you define an event, you define a package format. When you register to send an event, you declare what format it uses.

The process of defining and registering an event might still seem a bit weird, so let’s look ahead a bit. Here in expenseItem, we’re going to send an event named updateExpense. Later in expenseForm, we’re going to send an event named createExpense. Both of these events need to include an expense to be saved to the server. And so they both use the c:expensesItemUpdate event type, or package format, to send their events.

On the receiving end, our main expenses component is going to register to handle both of these events. Although the server call ends up being the same, the user interface updates are slightly different. So how does expenses know whether to create or update the expense in the c:expensesItemUpdate package? By the name of the event being sent.

Understanding the distinction here, and how one event can be used for multiple purposes, is a light bulb moment in learning Lightning Components. If you haven’t had that moment quite yet, you’ll have it when you look at the rest of the code.

Before we move on to handling events, let’s summarize what it takes to send them.

Define a custom event by creating a Lightning Event, giving it a name and attributes.

Register your component to send these events, by choosing a custom event type and giving this specific use of that type a name.

Fire the event in your controller (or helper) code by:

Using component.getEvent() to create a specific event instance.

Sending the event with fire().

If you went ahead and implemented all of the code we just looked at, you can test it out. Reload your app, and toggle a Reimbursed?
checkbox a few times. If you missed a step, you’ll get an error, and you should recheck your work. If you did everything right…hey, wait, the expense changes color to show its Reimbursed? status, just as expected!

This behavior was present before we even started this unit. That’s the effect of the <lightning:input> component having value="{!v.expense.Reimbursed__c}" set. When you
toggle the switch, the local version of the expense is updated. But that change isn’t being sent up to the server. If you look
at the expense record in Salesforce, or reload the app, you won’t see the change.

Why not? We’ve only done half of the work to create a complete circuit for our event. We have to finish wiring the circuit by creating the event handler on the other side. That event handler will take care of sending the change to the server, and making the update durable.

Handling an Event

Enabling the expenseItem component to send an event required three steps. Enabling the expenses component to receive and handle these events requires three parallel steps.

Define a custom event. We’ve already done this, because expenseItem is sending the same custom event that expenses is receiving.

Register the component to handle the event. This maps the event to an action handler.

Actually handle the event in an action handler.

Since we’ve already done step 1, let’s immediately turn to step 2, and register expenses to receive and handle the updateExpense event. Like registering to send an event, registering to handle one is a single line of markup, which you should add to the expenses component right after the init handler.

Like the init handler, this uses the <aura:handler> tag, and has an action attribute that sets the controller action handler for the event. Like when you registered the event in expenseItem, here you set the name and type of the event—though note the use of the much more sensibly named event attribute for the type.

In other words, there’s not much here you haven’t seen before. What’s new, and specific to handling custom events, is the combination of the attributes, and knowing how this receiver “socket” in expenses matches up with the sender “socket” in expenseItem.

This completes the wiring part of making this work. All that’s left is to actually write the action handler!

We’ll start with the handleUpdateExpense action handler.
Here’s the code, and be sure to put it riiiiiight under the clickCreate action handler.

Two things you should notice right off the bat. First, except for the callback specifics, the
updateExpense helper method is identical to
the createExpense helper method. That smells
like opportunity.

Second, about those callback specifics. What gives? How can the right thing to do be nothing?

Think about it for a moment. Earlier, when testing sending the event (if not before), we saw that the expenseItem component’s color changed in response to toggling the Reimbursed? checkbox. Remember the explanation? The local copy of the expense record is already updated! So, at least for the moment, when the server tells us it was successful at updating its version, we don’t have to do anything.

Note that this code only handles the case where the server is successful at updating the expense record. We’d definitely have some work to do if there was an error. Say, Accounting flagged this expense as non-reimbursable, making it impossible to set this field to true. But that, as they say, is a lesson for another day.

Refactor the Helper Functions

Let’s go back to that opportunity we saw to factor out some common code. The two helper functions are identical except for the callback. So, let’s make a new, more generalized function that takes the callback as a parameter.

createExpense is only a little shorter, but it’s exclusively focused on what to do when the response comes back (the callback). And wow, updateExpense is a one-liner!

Refactor the Add Expense Form

That little refactoring exercise was so satisfying, and using events was so (we’re sorry)
electrifying, let’s do it again, but bigger. More cowbell!

This next task involves extracting the Add Expense form from the expenses component, and
moving it to its own, new component. Extracting the form markup is easy enough, a simple
copy-and-paste exercise. But what else moves with it? Before we start moving pieces
around willy-nilly, let’s think about what moves and what stays.

In the current design, the form’s action handler, clickCreate, handles input validation, sending the request to the server,
and updating local state and user interface elements. The form will still need an action
handler, and should probably still handle form validation. But we’ll plan on having the
rest stay behind, because we’re keeping our server request logic consolidated in the
expenses component.

So there’s a little (but only a little!) teasing apart to do there. Our plan, then, is to
start by moving the form markup, and then move as little as possible after that to make
it work correctly. We’ll refactor both components to communicate via events, instead of
via direct access to the expenses array
component attribute.

Let’s get started!

In the main expenses component, select
everything between the two <!-- CREATE NEW EXPENSE
--> comments, including the beginning and ending comments themselves.
Cut it to your clipboard. (Yes, cut. We’re committed.)

Create a new Lightning component, and name it “expenseForm”. Paste the copied Add Expense
form markup into the new component, between the <aura:component> tags.

Back to the expenses component. Add the new
expenseForm component to the markup. That
section of expenses should look like this.

At this point, you can reload your app to see the changes. There should be no
visible changes. But, unsurprisingly, the Create Expense button no longer
works.

Let’s get quickly through the rest of the moving things around part.

Next, move the newExpense attribute from the
expenses component to the expenseForm component markup. This is used for the
form fields, so it needs to be in the form component. It moves over with no changes
required, so just cut from one and paste in the other.

In the expenseForm component, create the
controller and helper resources.

Move the clickCreate action handler from the
expenses controller to the expenseForm controller. The button is in the form
component, and so the action handler for the button needs to be there, too. Believe it
or not, this also needs no changes. (You might begin sensing a theme here.)

Now we need to make a couple of actual changes. But these will be familiar, because we’re
just adding event sending, which we did before for expenseItem. expenseItem, you’ll
recall, also sends an event with an expense
payload, which is handled by the expenses
component.

At this point, we’ve done all the work to implement the expenseForm component. You should be able to reload the app, and the form
now “works” in the sense that there are no errors, and you should see the appropriate
form messages when you enter invalid data. If you’re using the Salesforce Lightning
Inspector, you can even see that the expensesItemUpdate event is being fired. All that’s left is to handle
it.

Before we handle the event, please do notice how easy this refactoring was. Most of the
code didn’t change. There’s a total of six lines of new code and markup in the preceding
steps. It’s unfamiliar to do this work today, but do it a few times, and you realize
that you’re just moving a bit of code around.

OK, let’s finish this. The expenseForm fires the
createExpense event, but we also need the
expenses component to catch it. First we
register the createExpense event handler, and
wire it to the handleCreateExpense action
handler. Once again, this is a single line of markup. Add this line right above or below
the updateExpense event handler.

Yep, that simple. All of the work is delegated to the createExpense helper function, and that didn’t move or change. Our handleCreateExpense action handler is just there to
wire the right things together.

And with that, we’re finished showing how to loosely couple components using events.
Create and fire the event in one component, catch and handle it in another. Wireless
circuits!

Bonus Lesson—Minor Visual Improvements

Before we head off into the sunset, or rather, the challenge, here are two modest visual improvements.

First, have you noticed that the Reimbursed and relative date time labels are a nearly invisible
blue on a green background?

If it’s been bothering you, too, here’s how to fix it. (We held off on having you do this until
we’d refactored the form into its own component.) In the expenseItem component, add a style resource by clicking the STYLE
button. Replace the default style rules with the following.

Last, we’d like to improve the layout of our app a little bit, by adding a few container
components. This last bit also gives you an opportunity to see the full expense component after all our changes. In the
expense component, replace the expensesList markup with the following.

The effects of the changes are to add some margins and padding, and make the expenses list more narrow. The layout leaves room to put something over there on the right. In the next unit, we’ll suggest a couple of exercises you could do on your own.